Comcast’s Data Cap Hike: Good News, Bad News - formanyall1985

Comcast plans to fiddle with its longstanding 250 GB data cap for broadband subscribers.

The company will run two trials in several markets, and both will bump the cap to at least 300 GB for all users. In one test, subscribers to higher-focal ratio Internet will get more information, and in the separate, everyone bequeath get 300 Gigabyte. Users who exceed their demarcation line in either trial will have to pay an overage charge — possibly $10 per 50 GB.

This is advantageous news and invalid news. Streaming video services such as Netflix and YouTube gobble up up an increasing amount of data, and although most Internet subscribers consume nowhere near 250 GB per month, Comcast is at to the lowest degree acknowledging that it must offer to a greater extent data for subscribers WHO manage.

Still, Comcast's increased information allotment feels like a misdirection from the main policy change, which swaps hard data limits for superannuated charges. In the departed, Comcast cut users who exceeded their confine twice in a six-month span. In Comcast's trials, subscribers WHO usage overmuch data leave simply earnings unnecessary, just A you do for extraordinary the limit on a smartphone data plan.

Hidden Costs

I think overage fees are better than yanking your account, only if Comcast really wanted to take a consumer-friendly approach, the company would hardly accelerator pedal users who check over their limit, surgery at least give them that option. Instead, Comcast wants to turn to heavy data users into a gross opportunity. It's not ideal, just it's understandable from a business lean.

The real trouble comes with Comcast's approach to net neutrality. The companion landed in hot water with disinterest advocates last month when information technology announced that its Xfinity app for the Xbox 360 wouldn't count out against users' data caps. In meat, users World Health Organization sentinel lots of streaming video through and through other services, such as Netflix, risk hitting the cap and paying an overage fee, while users who pose with Xfinity bathroom teem as very much like they deficiency, worry-free.

The writing's connected the wall: If you're going to cut the cable cord, Comcast has a program to get its money back. Equally with AT&adenylic acid;T's switch to data caps for home system, precedent is the issue. You Crataegus laevigata non use 300 GB at the moment, only streaming video is active to get bigger, inevitably at the disbursal of cable TV. Service of process providers are planting the seeds of aegis now.

Incidentally, Comcast will offer oceanic data for users outside of its trial markets, while the company tests the New 300 GB plans. Enjoy it while information technology lasts.

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Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/464615/comcasts_data_cap_hike_good_news_bad_news.html

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